Manhattan Mattress Mystery

Well, box spring, actually. But I liked the alliteration and the wink to Woody Allen (well, Woody Allen before everything went wrong).

The Bedbugger known as iphone interloper* has sent me a batch of interesting photos taken on 1st Ave. in the East Village on Saturday at 2 pm. First the photos, then the commentary:

This sequence shows some guys, wearing gloves, removing a box spring to a truck. They also took some other furniture.

What’s interesting here is that the truck is small (a pick-up) and the workers are, according to our eye witness, apparently building employees, and employees of a company that offers cleaning and maintenance services to building owners and managers (the company’s name is on the pick-up truck). In other words, it does not appear to be a routine trash pick-up, nor a move. A young man sits on a chair watching the process. Is he the owner of the items? A bystander?

Can you think of any reasons why building and contracted staff might be carefully removing a small amount of furniture from a building? It doesn’t appear to be a move, nor could it be an eviction. Might they be removing hazardous items? Keeping them away from the curb (where they might be re-cycled into another apartment, with disastrous effect)?

Just speculating. We have no idea what is going on. Maybe someone just moved out and left their stuff and the building had to get it out. But in my building, if the manager had to dispose of abandoned stuff, he’s dump it on the curb, not have it carted off.

*Ever since Bed Bug Helloise came along, folks have assumed that all new pseudonyms point to yours truly. iPhone interloper is an anonymous reader of this blog. iPhone interloper is not nobugsonme. nobugsonme, sadly, only encounters iPhones from a great distance and in the Apple Store, where they remain attached to a long security cable. 😉

Sometimes buildings will have things thrown out not on the scheduled day. Perhaps
it or was suspected of being bed bugs and the building did not want to keep it inside
till collection day (good for them). It also could have been roach infested. In any
case they may hire someone to cart it away or they risk a minimum $150 ticket
especially in an area which is a targeted rodent zone.

Maybe the spectator is exercising a finders-keepers claim on that chair. Squatting rights at Stuyvesant Town!

If it is a bed bug problem and the bystander is the owner of these items, then how crazy would it be for him to be sitting in his own presumably infested chair – in the midst of this careful and professional disposal process. Cruel and absurd, I tell ya. I’d hafta laugh.